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April 28, 2016

Play with your pet over your lunch break

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PlayDate in action

Fetch 2.0

All pet owners know the look. Those sad eyes staring up at you when you leave for work or errands or life. That look was the motivation behind PlayDate, a ball for cats and dogs that allows owners to play and interact with their pets from anywhere.

When PlayDate co-founder Kevin Li first adopted his dog Hulk he wanted to make sure he was getting proper exercise, enough socialization, and sniffing new things every day, so Li built an activity tracker for Hulk. But “I realized he didn’t need more tracking; he needed more time with his best friend,” Li says in the company’s promotional video. “I can’t be with him all the time, but PlayDate is the next best thing.”

The PlayDate is a bright orange ball covered in shatterproof plastic that’s moveable via an iOS or Android app. You can see how your furbaby is reacting to the ball with a stabilized, high definition, wide-angle webcam.

And because you can never have enough photos or videos of your dog or cat, you can also take and save still images and videos of playtime. Pet parents can speak and listen to their pets through a speaker and microphone, and there’s a squeak button on the app to help get the little creatures’ attention. PlayTime for cats includes a slit in the outer shell of the ball for ribbon inserts.

PlayDate launched on Indiegogo on April 16 and has raised over $155,000. You can preorder the ball for $149. It will ship in December just in time for the holidays. Pet present done.

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